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Out of the Fog 



A Story of the Sea 



G. K. OBER 



NINETEEN ELEVEN 

Association Press 

NEW YORK 



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Copyright, 1911, by the 

International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



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C"CI.A202858 



FOREWORD 

Since I am permitted to consider my- 
self in some way responsiible for this 
narrative's being put on record, it is with 
the very heartiest good will that I accept 
the publishers' kind invitation to write 
a brief foreword to it. 

I have, during twenty years, been 
working against a problem that I recog- 
nized called for all — yes, and more, than — 
I had to give it. For I have been en- 
deavoring, through my own imperfect 
attainments, to translate into undeniable 
language on the Labrador Coast, the 
message of God's personal fatherhood 
over and love for the humblest of His 
creatures. During these years, often of 
overwork, I have considered it w^orth 
while to lay aside time and energy and 
strength to improve the charting and 
pilot directions of our devious and some- 
times dangerous waterways. 

How much more gladly shall I nat- 
urally avail myself of any chance by 



4 FOREWORD 

which to contribute to the knowledge of 
that seemingly ever evasive pathway 
leading to that which to me is the su- 
preme motive power of human life — faith 
in the divine Redeemer and Master. The 
best helps to reach the haven we are in 
search of, over the unblazed trails of 
Labrador, are ever the tracks of those 
who have found the way before us. Just 
such to me is this simple and delightful 
story of Mr. Ober's. It has my most 
hearty prayers for its unprecedented 
circulation. 

WILFRED T. GRENFELL. 




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Out of the Fog 

OLD SALTS 

The lure of the sea prevailed, and at 
nineteen I shipped for a four-months' 
fishing trip on the Newfoundland Banks. 
These banks are not the kind that slope 
toward some gentle stream where the 
weary fisherman can rest between bites, 
protected from the sun by the shade of an 
overhanging tree ; they are thirty to forty 
fathoms beneath the surface of the Atlan- 
tic Ocean, a thousand miles out from, the 
Massachusetts coast. 

The life that had long appealed to my 
imagination now came in with a shock 
and a realism that was in part a disillu- 
sionment and in part an intense satisfac- 
tion of some of my primal instincts and 



6 OLD SALTS 

cravings. Old salts are more picturesque 
and companionable spinning yarns about 
the stove in a shoemaker's shop than 
they are when one is obliged to live, eat 
and sleep with them for four months in 
the crowded forecastle of a fishing 
schooner. An ocean storm is a sublime 
spectacle, witnessed from a position of 
safety on the land; but a storm on the 
ocean, experienced in its very vortex from 
the deck of a tiny fishing boat, is thrilling 
beyond description. "Ships that pass in 
the night" make interesting reading; but 
if they pass near you, in a foggy night, 
on the Banks, they are better than the 
muezzin of the Moslem in reminding a 
man that it is time to pray. I recall with 
vividness the scene on such a night, and 
still feel the compelling pow^er of the 
panic in the voice of the mild-mannered 
old sea dog on anchor watch, as he yelled 
down the companionway, "All hands on 
deck." In six seconds we were all there ; 
and there was the great hulk of a two- 
thousand-ton ship looming up out of the 
night. She had evidently sighted our 



OLD SALTS 7 

little craft just in time to change her 
course, and was passing us with not more 
than a hundred and fifty feet to spare. I 
can see them tonight, as they vanished 
into the fog — three men and a big New- 
foundland dog, looking over the rail and 
down on us who, a moment before, were 
about to die. 

Storm, fog, icebergs, cold, exposure, the 
alert and strenuous life, with his own life 
the forfeit of failure, are a part of the 
normal experience of a deep sea fisherman. 
Two members of our crew were father 
and son, Uncle Ike Patch and his son, 
Frank. The old man had been a fisher- 
man in his youth, but had been on shore 
for thirty years. When we were making 
up our crew, Frank caught the fishing 
fever and wanted to go, and his father 
decided to go along with him. They 
were out in their dory, one foggy day, 
and when the boats came back to the 
vessel from hauling their trawls. Uncle 
Ike and Frank were missing. We rang 
the bell, fired our small cannon, shouted 
and sent boats out after them. As night 



8 OLD SALTS 

came on, we were huddled together in 
the forecastle, wondering about their 
fate, while the old fishermen told stories 
of the fog and its fearful toll of human 
life. It seemed a terrible thing for the 
old man and his boy to be out there, drift- 
ing no one knew where; and though we 
were accustomed to danger, there was 
a gloomy crew and little sleep on our 
schooner that night. In the morning the 
weather cleared and soon our missing 
boat came alongside; we received them 
as men alive from the dead. They had 
found shelter on another fishing vessel 
that happened to be lying at anchor not 
more than two or three miles away. 

There was reason for our solicitude, 
for we knew very well that a large propor- 
tion of the men who get adrift in the fog 
are never found alive. Shortly before this 
experience we had spoken a Gloucester 
vessel and learned that her crew had 
picked up, a short time before, one of the 
boats of a Provincetown schooner that 
had been adrift four days. One of the two 
men was dead and the other insane. Each 



OLD SALTS 9 

day brought its own dangers, which the 
fishermen met as part of the day's work, 
thinking little of them when they were 
past, and ready for whatever another day 
might bring. 

But four months is a long time to be 
out of sight of land, on a fresh fish and 
"salt hoss" diet, with molasses instead of 
sugar in your tea, and fresh water too 
much needed for drinking purposes to 
waste in personal ablutions. We all 
swore that we would never go to sea 
again; and when, after gliding into har- 
bor in the night, we looked, one clear 
September morning, on the seemingly 
unnatural green of the grass and trees 
of the old North Shore, I said to myself, 
"This is God's country, if there ever was 
one, and I, for one, will never get out of 
sight of it again." 

But I had tasted fog and brine, and the 
"landlubber's" lot was too monotonously 
tame for me. The next spring saw me 
on the deck of the same schooner headed 
for the Newfoundland Banks, the home 
of the codfish and the fog. 



10 OLD SALTS 

A seafaring ancestry and a boyhood 
spent within sound of the surf doubtless 
had much to do with my love of the salt 
water. My grandfather was one of six 
brothers who were sea captains, and our 
family had clung to the North Shore of 
Massachusetts Bay almost since the first 
white settler had moored his bark in that 
vicinity, more than two hundred years 
before. 

My boyhood home was originally a 
fishing town, since changed to manufac- 
turing, and was fragrant with traditions 
of the sea. Many of the neighborhood 
homes in which I visited as a boy had 
souvenirs of the ocean displayed on the 
mantelpiece or on the everlasting soli- 
tude of the parlor table. There were 
great conch shells that a boy could put 
to his ear and hear the surf roaring on 
the beaches from which they had been 
taken; articles made of sandalwood; 
curiously wrought things under glass; 
miniature pagodas; silk scarfs; bow- 
legged idols; and a wonderful model of 
the good ship Dolphin, or of some other 



OLD SALTS 11 

equally staunch craft, in which the bread- 
winner, father or son, had sailed on some 
eventful voyage. These had all been 
"brought from over sea," I was told, and 
this gave me the impression that "over 
sea" must be a very rich and interesting 
place. 

But the souvenirs of the sea were not 
as interesting to me as its survivors. We 
had in our town, and especially in our 
end of it, which was called "the Cove," 
a choice assortment of old sea dogs who 
had sailed every sea, in every clime — had 
seen the world, in fact, and were not 
averse, under the stimulus of good lis- 
teners, to telling all they knew about it 
and sometimes a little more. 

Scattered through the Cove were many 
little shoemakers' shops, into which, espe- 
cially in the long winter evenings, these 
old salts would drift. There around the 
little cylinder stove, with its leather-chip 
fire, leaking a fragrance the memory of 
which makes me homesick as I write 
about it, they would swap their stories of 



12 OLD SALTS 

the sea, many of which had originally 
been based on fact. 

These old derelicts — and some of the 
younger seafaring men — were better than 
dime novels to us boys, for we could 
always question them and draw out an- 
other story. Some of them were uncon- 
scious heroes who had often risked their 
lives for their comrades and the vessel 
owners; and for the support and comfort 
of their families no dangers or hardships 
had seemed too great to be undertaken or 
endured. We boys held these old salts 
in high esteem, and never forgot to give 
to each his appropriate title of "Captain" 
or "Skipper," as the case might be. We 
also occasionally had some fun with them. 

We never thought of any of them as 
bad men, though some of them, by their 
own testimony, had lived wild and reck- 
less lives. One or two, according to per- 
sistent rumor, had carried out cargoes of 
New England rum and brought back 
shiploads of "black ivory" from the West 
coast of Africa. Not a few of them were 
picturesquely profane. Old Skipper Tom 




Old Salts Are More Picturesque and Companionable Spinning 

Yarns about the Stove in a Shoemaker's Shop than 

when One Is Obliged to Live, Eat and 

Sleep with Them. 



14 OLD SALTS 

Bowman had a very original oath, 
"tender-eyed Satan!" which he must 
have had copyrighted, as he was the only 
one that I ever heard use it. We boys 
would sometimes bait him, provoking 
him to exasperation, that we might hear 
it in all its original force and fervor. 

We knew his habits well. He eked out 
a scanty sustenance by fishing off the 
shore and would frequently come in on 
the ebb tide and leave his boat half way 
up the beach, going home to dinner and 
returning when the flood tide had about 
reached his boat, to bring it up to its 
moorings. 

So one day we dug a "honey pot" by 
the side of his boat, at the very spot 
where we knew he would approach it, 
covered it over with dry seaweed and 
about the time he was due we were lying 
out of sight, but within earshot, behind 
the rocks. He drifted down, at peace 
with all the world, went in over the tops 
of his rubber boots, and then, for one 
blissful moment, we had our reward. 

Some of these old salts were so thor- 



OLD SALTS 15 

oughly salted, being drenched with the 
brine of many stormy voyages, that they 
kept in good condition well beyond their 
allotted time of three score years and ten. 
Some were of uncertain age, but were 
evidently well beyond the century mark, 
as proved by the aggregate time con- 
sumed on their many voyages, the stories 
of which they had reiterated with such 
convincing detail. 

One of these. Captain Sam Morris, 
was patiently stalked by the boys through 
a long season of yarn spinning, careful 
tally being kept. When the tale was 
complete, the boys closed in on him. 

"How old are you. Captain Sam?" 

"Oh, I dunno, I ain't kep' count." 

"Are you seventy?" 

"I swan! I dunno." 

"Well, you were on the Old Dove with 
Skipper Jimmie Stone, weren't you?" 

"Sartin." 

"You were on the Constitution, when 
she fought the Guerriere, weren't you?" 

How could he deny it? 

"Well, weren't you with Captain Lov- 



16 OLD SALTS 

ett on four of his three-year trading 
voyages to AustraHa and China?" 

"Course I was." 

"How about those trips 'round the 
Horn, on the cHpper ship 'Mary Jane' 
from '49 to '55?" 

"I was thar." They kept relentlessly on 
down the list, and then showed him the 
tally. Allowing for infancy, an abbre- 
viated boyhood on land, and the time they 
had known him since he had quit the sea, 
he was one hundred and thirty-five years 
old. The showing did not disconcert him, 
however. He was interested, but he had 
told those stories so often and had come 
to believe each of them so implicitly that 
he could not doubt them in the aggregate. 
He simply exclaimed: "Well, I'll be 
darned! I feel like a young chap o' 
sixty." 

But while some of these old sailors 
liked to "spin yarns" and some had their 
frailties, they were, as a rule, strong 
characters, rugged, honest, courageous, 
unselfish — real men, in fact, whose ster- 
ling qualities stood out in strong contrast 



OLD SALTS 17 

against the unreality of many timid and 
non-effective lives about them. It was 
not their romancing, but their reality, 
and the achieving power of their lives 
that appealed to me as a boy, and I was 
drawn to the kind of life that had helped 
to produce such men. 

Then, too, the ocean itself, with its 
immensity, its mystery, its moods, the 
danger in it, and the man's w^ork in mas- 
tering it, was almost irresistibly attrac- 
tive to me. 

On graduating from high school I de- 
clined my father's offer to send me to 
college, thinking that the life I had in 
view did not require a college education. 
Then he made me a very attractive busi- 
ness proposition, but it looked to me like 
slavery, and what I wanted most was 
freedom. My father and mother were 
both Christians, but I had become skep- 
tical, profane and reckless of public 
opinion. I had left home for a boarding 
house in the same town at eighteen, and 
at nineteen I had slipped the moorings 
and was heading out to sea. 



ADRIFT 

My second trip to the Banks was made 
in response to the same kind of impulse 
as that which drives the nomad out of 
his winter quarters in the springtime or 
brings the wild geese back to their sum- 
mer feeding grounds. To one who really 
loves the ocean, the return to it after a 
period of exile on the land, is an inde- 
scribable satisfaction. There was at 
least one of our crew who experienced 
this emotion as our staunch little craft 
turned her nose to the blue water, and 
with all sail set and lee rail almost under 
water, leaped away from the petty re- 
strictions of the shore into the practically 
limitless expanse of the Atlantic. In a 
week we were on the fishing ground and 
sentiment gave way to business. 

Our schooner was a trawler, equipped 
with six dories and a crew of fifteen, in- 
cluding the skipper, the cook, the boy and 
two men for each boat. Each trawl had 
a thousand hooks, a strong ground line 



ADRIFT 19 

six thousand feet long, with a smaller 
line two and a half feet in length, with 
hook attached, at every fathom. These 
hooks were baited and the trawl was set 
each night. The six trawls stretched away 
from the vessel like the spokes from the 
hub of a wheel, the buoy marking the 
outer anchor of each trawl being over a 
mile away. I was captain of a dory this 
year, passing as a seasoned fisherman 
with my experience of the year before. 
My helper or "bow-man" was John 
Hogan, a young Irishman about my own 
age, red-headed, but green at the fishing 
business. John's mother kept a little 
oasis for thirsty neighbors, in a city adja- 
cent to my home town, and his father 
was a man of unsteady habits. But John 
was a good fellow, active and willing, 
and, though he had not inherited a rugged 
constitution, he could pull a good steady 
stroke. 

Soon after we reached the Banks, a 
storm swept our decks and nearly carried 
away our boats. As a result, the dories, 
particularly my own, were severely 



20 ADRIFT 

Strained and leaked badly. For two 
weeks, however, we had no fog, but on the 
morning of the second of June, just as we 
went over the schooner's side and shaped 
our course for our outer buoy, a bank of 
fog with an edge as perpendicular as the 
side of a house moved down on us like a 
great glacier, though much more rapidly, 
shutting us in and everything else out 
from sight. It was ugly and thick, as if 
all the fog factories from Grand Manan to 
Labrador had been working overtime for 
the two weeks before and had sent their 
whole output in one consignment. We 
had just passed our inner buoy when the 
fog struck us, but we kept on for the 
outer buoy, as was customary in foggy 
weather, since it was safer to get that 
and pull in toward the vessel, rather than 
take the inner buoy, pull out, and find 
ourselves with a boatload of fish and 
ugly weather over a mile from the vessel. 
We had our bearings, I had often found 
the buoy in the fog and believed that we 
could do it again. We kept on rowing 
and knew when we had rowed far enough, 



ADRIFT 21 

though we had not counted the strokes; 
but we found nothing. 

"Guess we have drifted too far to lee- 
ward; pull up to windward a little. 
That's strange, we must have passed it, 
this blamed fog is so thick. What's that 
pver there?" We zigzagged back and 
forth for some time and then realized that 
we had missed it and must go back to the 
vessel and get our inner buoy. This 
seemed easy, but we found that it is as 
important to have a point of departure 
as it is to have a destination, and not 
knowing just where we were we could not 
head our boat to where the vessel was. 
We shouted, and listened, rowed this way 
and that way but not a sound came to us 
through the fog, although we knew that 
the boy must be at his post ringing the 
bell, so that the boats could hark their 
way back to the vessel. I learned after- 
ward that the tide that morning was ex- 
ceptionally strong. I had noted its direc- 
tion and made allowance for it, before 
leaving the schooner, but we were where 
the Gulf Stream and the Arctic Current 



22 ADRIFT 

are not very far apart and the resulting 
tides are strong and changeable. We 
were in the grip of two great elemental 
and relentless forces, the impenetrable 
fog, cutting off all our communications, 
and the strong ocean current sweeping us 
away into the uninhabited waste of 
waters. From my experience of the year 
before, I knew what it meant to be lost in 
the fog on the Banks, practically in mid- 
ocean ; I understood that if the fog lasted 
for a week or ten days as it sometimes 
did, especially at that season of the year, 
it was a fight for our lives. I soon 
realized that we were lost and that the 
fight was on. 

We were certainly stripped for it, with- 
out impedimenta, no anchor, compass, 
provisions, water, no means of catching 
fish or fowl, and with rather light cloth- 
ing, as we were dressed for work and not 
for protection against cold. But youth is 
optimistic and claims what is coming to 
it, with a margin for luck, and we started 
on our new voyage of discovery with 
good courage and a cheerful disregard of 



ADRIFT 23 

the hardships, dangers and possible death 
in the fog, with which and into which we 
were drifting. 

It would not be strictly accurate to say 
that we saw nothing during all the time 
we were adrift, but the things we saw 
were of the same stuff that the fog was 
made of. Early in the first day I saw a 
sail dimly outlined in the misty air. I 
called John's attention to it with a shout, 
and he saw it too, but, as we rowed 
toward it, the sail retreated and then dis- 
appeared. We thought that this was 
strange, for the wind was not strong 
enough to take a vessel away from us 
faster than we could row, and we were 
near enough to make ourselves heard. 
Soon, the sail appeared again, and again 
we shouted and rowed toward it, and 
again it glided away from us and dis- 
appeared, and again, and again, through 
the seemingly endless procession of the 
slow-moving hours of that first day, we 
chased the phantom ship. 

When night came on, there came w^ith 
it a deepening sense of loneliness and 



24 ADRIFT 

isolation. The night was also very cold, 
the chill penetrated our thin clothing, 
and we were compelled to row the boat 
to keep ourselves, not warm, but a little 
less cold. The icebergs coming down 
on the Arctic Current hold the season 
back, and early June on the Banks is 
much like April on the Massachusetts 
coast. We tried to sleep lying down in 
the bottom of the boat with our heads in 
a trawl tub, but we were stiff with cold, 
the boat leaked badly, and it was neces- 
sary to get up frequently and bail out the 
water. The thought also that we might 
drift within sight or sound of a vessel, or 
within sight of a trawl buoy, made us 
afraid to sleep. 

The night finally wore away, the second 
day and night were like the first, the third 
like the first and second and the fourth 
day like another "cycle of Cathay." 
These four days and nights were like 
solitary confinement to the prisoner, the 
grim monotony and lack of incident con- 
tributing to the cumulative effect and 
accentuating the sense of helplessness and 



ADRIFT 25 

isolation. There was nothing to relieve 
the situation. We were like an army ly- 
ing in trenches in the face of the enemy, 
waiting for the enemy's move. 

The fourth night we were startled by 
the sound of the fog horn of a sailing 
vessel. The wind was blowing almost a 
gale. We listened to get the direction, 
then sprang to the oars and rowed hard to 
intercept her, shouting, listening, rowing 
with all our strength, and willing, if need 
be, to be run down, in the chance of being 
seen and rescued. The horn finally 
sounded so near that it seemed that we 
could almost see the vessel, and we felt 
sure that they could hear our call. But 
our hearts sank as the sounds grew 
fainter and soon we were alone again with 
the wind and fog. The fifth day we 
heard the whistle of an ocean steamship. 
"We can surely head this one off," we 
thought, but she quickly passed us, too 
far away to see or hear. It was a bitter 
disappointment as this floating hotel, full 
of warmth, food, water, shelter and com- 
panionship, for the lack of each and all 



26 ADRIFT 

of which we were perishing, rushed by, 
so near, yet unconscious and unheeding, 
in too great a hurry to stop and listen to 
our cry for help. I have thought of this 
since, as I have hurried along with the 
crowd in the street of a great city and 
wondered, if we stopped to listen, what 
cry might come to us out of the deep. 

The fifth night the sea was running 
high. We were drifting with a trawl 
tub fastened to the "painter" as a drag to 
keep the boat headed to the wind, when it 
began to rain. I spread my oil jacket to 
catch the water, and we waited until we 
could collect enough for a drink, watching 
the drops eagerly, as we had tasted 
neither food nor water since leaving the 
vessel five days before. Just as we were 
about to drink, however, our boat shipped 
a sea, filling the oil jacket with salt water, 
and there was no more rain. 

Every day we passed great flocks of 
sea fowl floating on the water, coming 
frequently almost within an oar's length, 
but always just out of reach. We were 
in worse condition than the Ancient 



ADRIFT 27 

Mariner, with food as well as water every- 
where about us, and not a morsel or a 
drop to eat or drink. Thirst is harder to 
endure than hunger, and yet hunger 
finally wakes up the wolf; and the time 
comes when even the thought of canni- 
balism can be entertained without horror. 
About this time John asked me, "Well, 
what do you think?" 

"Oh," I said, "I think that one of us 
will come out of it all right." 

He started, as if he thought that I had 
premature designs on him. 

"You need not be afraid," I said, "I'll 
not take advantage of you." 

He knew that I was the stronger and 
perhaps thought that if I felt as he did, 
his chances were very small. 

The sixth day, John seemed like a man 
overwhelmed with the horror of a situa- 
tion that had gotten beyond his control. 
He cowered at the opposite end of the 
boat and had said nothing for a long time. 
Finally he opened a conversation with a 
person of whose presence I had not been 
conscious. 



28 ADRIFT 

"Jim," he said, "come, give me a piece." 

"Jim who?" I asked. "Piece of what? 
Where is he?" 

"Jim Woodbury," he answered, "don't 
you see him? There he is, hiding under 
that oil jacket. He's been there over half 
an hour, eating pie, and he won't give me 
any." 

I tried to laugh him out of his delusion, 
but the thing was real to him. Soon he 
jumped up and said: "I'm going on 
board; I'm tired of staying out here." 

"How will you get there?" I asked. 

"Walk," he answered, "the water ain't 
deep," and he started to get overboard. 

I caught him and pulled him back into 
the boat, not any too soon, for if he had 
gone overboard, the sharks would prob- 
ably have gotten him, for they were not 
very far away. Every now and then I 
had seen their fins cutting the surface of 
the water, as they patrolled back and 
forth, waiting their time, or ours, as if 
they knew that it was only a question of 
time. Soon John started again to get 
overboard. This time I punished him so 



ADRIFT 29 

severely that he did not try it again. 
After that, I had to keep my eye on him 
constantly. His ravings about food were 
not particularly soothing to my feelings, 
for I was as hungry as he, only not so 
demonstrative about it. 

The seventh day drifted slowly by and 
the fog still held us captive. For a week 
we had had no food, no water, and 
scarcely any sleep; having our boots on 
continuously stopped the circulation in 
our feet with the same effect as if they 
had been frozen; we were chilled to the 
bone; my boat mate was insane. Since 
the whistle of the steamship had died 
away in the distance, two days before, no 
sound had come to us out of the fog but 
the voices of the -wind and the swash of 
the waves. I knew the chart of the 
Banks and had a general idea as to where 
we were. There is a great barren tract on 
the Banks where few fish are found and 
fishermen seldom go, and we had drifted 
into this man-forsaken place. I had al- 
most said "God-forsaken" too, but some- 
thing began to shape itself in my mind 



30 ADRIFT 

about that time, that makes it difficult for 
me now to say this. Rather, as I look 
back on our experience, I feel more like 
claiming fellowship with the "wanderer" 
who called the place of his hardship 
"Bethel" because it was there, at the end 
of self and of favoring conditions, that he 
found God. 



THE PILOT 

I was near "the end of my rope" — I 
was not frightened, or discouraged; my 
mind was perfectly clear; I was not 
stampeded. Of course, I had thought of 
God and of prayer, but I was a skeptic, 
as I supposed, and considered both not 
proven. But the steady contemplation 
of the probability of death, for seven suc- 
cessive days, under conditions that com- 
pelled candor, raised questions that skep- 
ticism could not answer, and gave to my 
questions answers that skepticism could 
not refute. There comes a time, under 
such conditions, when common sense 
asserts itself and sophistry fails to 
satisfy. Since I made this discovery in 
my personal experience, I have learned 
that my case was not peculiar, but in 
keeping with a general law in human ex- 
perience, long understood and admirably 
stated in the 107th Psalm. Such words 
as these have come "out of the depths" 



32 THE PILOT 

and it is sometimes necessary to go down 
into the depths to prove them to be true. 
"They wandered .... in a soHtary way ; 
they found no city to dwell in. Hungry 
and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. 
Then they cried unto the Lord in their 
trouble, and he delivered them out of their 
distresses, and he led them forth by the 
right way, that they might go to a city 

of habitation Such as sit in darkness 

and in the shadow of death, being bound 
in affliction and iron; because they re- 
belled against the words of God, and con- 
temned the counsel of the Most High: 
therefore he brought down their heart 
with labor; they fell down and there was 
none to help. Then they cried unto the 
Lord in their trouble, and he saved them 
out of their distresses. He brought them 
out of darkness and the shadow of death, 

and brake their bands in sunder 

They that go down to the sea in ships, 
that do business in great waters; these 
see the works of the Lord, and his 
wonders in the deep. For he command- 
eth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which 



THE PILOT 33 

lifteth up the waves thereof. They 
mount up to the heaven, they go down 
again to the depths: their soul is melted 
because of trouble .... they are at their 
wits' end. Then they cry unto the Lord 
in their trouble, and he bringeth them out 
of their distresses. He maketh the storm 
a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. 
Then are they glad because they be quiet ; 
so he bringeth them unto their desired 
haven." 

I had drifted into the "secret place," 
the door was shut, and it was the right 
time and place for me to pray. I saw that 
my life had been a failure, that I was 
absolutely worthless, and that, if death 
came then, there was not one good thing 
that I had ever done that would survive. 
In fact, I could think of nothing in my life 
that was worth remembering. I was not 
so much concerned about my own salva- 
tion as for another chance to live and to 
do an unselfish work in the world. And 
so I did what I thought then (and think 
still) was the only sane thing to do, I 
signaled for the Pilot. 



34 THE PILOT 

That night the rain came. I spread my 
oil jacket and caught an abundance of 
water of which we drank deeply. With 
this refreshment came new hope and new 
courage for the final struggle, if safety 
could be gained that way. I reviewed 
the situation and considered one by one 
the possible courses we might take. We 
seemed to be shut in to three things. 
The first possibility was to row to land; 
but the nearest land, the Newfoundland 
coast, was nearly three hundred miles 
away, and I decided that we did not have 
the time or the strength to reach it. The 
second possibility was to be picked up by 
a passing vessel; but this did not look 
encouraging, for two had already passed 
us. The third and last hope was to find 
a fishing vessel at anchor, and within a 
reasonable distance. This last possi- 
bility seemed almost probable. But how^ 
probable? Possibly within ten miles, 
probably within twenty-five, certainly 
within fifty, some fishermen were plying 
their trade, but where ? There are thirty- 
two points of the compass, and by deviat- 



THE PILOT 35 

ing one point at the center, a distance 
of fifty miles would bring us ten miles 
out of the way at the circumference. We 
could row fifty miles, but we cannot take 
chances. Yet there is a snug little fish- 
ing craft out there on the rim of the circle, 
waiting for us to find her! But which 
way shall we go? I finally decided that 
this was a problem for the Pilot, and I left 
it with Him, satisfied that He understood 
His business and that if He had any 
orders for me, He knew how to communi- 
cate them. 

The eighth day came, and with it came 
an impulse to row the boat in a certain 
direction. This impulse was not unlike 
the thousands that had come to me before. 
There was nothing about it to indicate 
that its source was any higher than my 
own imagination. If this was a voice 
from above the fog, it was certainly a still, 
small one. It was unheeded at first, not 
unrecognized. Reason said that to con- 
serve our strength we should sit still and 
wait for the lifting of the fog. Fear 
whispered that if I obeyed the impulse. 



36 THE PILOT 

we might be rowing directly away from 
safety. But the impulse persisted and 
prevailed. 

"Get up, John," I said, "we have a day's 
work ahead of us. We are going to row 
off in this direction." 

John responded automatically, fear 
acting in place of reason, but he was soon 
exhausted and lay down again. I kept 
on, however, resting now and then, and 
returning to the oars with the thought 
that fifty miles was a long distance and 
that we had a very small margin of time 
to our credit. Our course was with the 
wind, and nature worked with us all that 
eighth day and on into the night, as the 
pressure on me drove us toward our goal. 

About the middle of the eighth night I 
realized that I had reached the limit of 
my fighting strength. John was in worse 
condition than I, for I still had hope, but 
my hope was not in myself. Then I 
talked the situation over with the Pilot. 
We had nowhere else to go ; we had come 
as far as we could; our time was nearly 
up — what of the night? and what of the 



THE PILOT 37 

morning? John was asleep; the world 
was a long way off : the sea and the mist 
seemed to have rolled over us and to have 
buried us ten thousand fathoms deep. 
But "out of the depths I cried," and I 
found the communication open. 

Between midnight and dawn the fog 
lifted and from the overhanging clouds 
the rain fell gently through the remainder 
of the night. John lay in his end of the 
boat, but I sat watching. Finally, as if 
in response to some secret signal, the 
darkness began its inevitable retreat and, 
as the night horizon receded, out of the 
gray of the morning, growing more and 
more distinct as the shadows fell away, 
appeared a dark object less than two miles 
distant, nebulous at first, then unmistak- 
able in its character. It was a solitary 
fishing vessel lying at anchor, toward 
which we had been rowing and drifting 
unerringly all through the night and the 
day before. 

There it was ! only a clumsy old fisher- 
man, but it was the best thing in all the 



38 THE PILOT 

world to us, and it was anchored and 
could not get away! 

I do not recall the experience of any 
tumultuous emotion as this messenger of 
hope appeared on our horizon, but we 
knew that we were safe. How easy it is 
to write this simple word of four letters ! 
but, to realize it, one must have a back- 
ground of despair. Since that morning, 
the words "safe," "safety," "salvation," 
have always come to me freighted with 
reality. 

It is doubtful if any of the vessel's crew 
had seen our boat, as it was scarcely day- 
light and such a small object lying close 
to the water would not be readily dis- 
cernible. I had thought, a few hours 
before, that my strength was entirely 
exhausted, but the sight of the vessel 
called out a reserve sufficient for the final 
effort. 

As I slowly brought our boat along- 
side, some of the crew were in evidence, 
getting ready for their day's work, and 
they seemed perplexed to account for 
our early morning call. But, when we 



THE PILOT 39 

came close to the vessel, our emaciated 
appearance evidently told the main out- 
lines of our story. They called to the 
others in a foreign tongue and the whole 
crew crowded to the rail. One strong 
fellow jumped into our boat and lifted 
John up while others reached down to 
help. Then, with their assistance, I 
tumbled on board, stiff with cold and with 
feet like stone. They gave us brandy 
and took us to the warm cabin where 
breakfast was being prepared and it is 
difficult to say which was more grateful, 
the smell of food or the warmth of the 
fire. John was put into the captain's bunk. 
It was a good exchange for he was not far 
from "Davy Jones' locker." We had 
been on board only a few hours when the 
fog rolled back again and continued for 
some time afterward. 

The vessel was a French fishing brig 
from the island of St. Malo in the English 
Channel. None of the crew understood 
English and neither of us could speak 
French, but they understood the language 
of distress and kindness needs no inter- 



40 THE PILOT 

preter. The captain showed me a calen- 
dar and pointed to the tenth of June, and 
when I pointed to the second he evidently 
found it hard to believe me, but John's 
condition helped to corroborate my state- 
ment. They let us eat as much as we 
wished, but nature protected us, for the 
process of eating was so painful at first 
that I felt like a sword swallower who had 
partaken too freely of his favorite dish. 
Fortunately, also, our hosts were living 
the simple life. Their menu consisted 
chiefly of sliced bread over which had 
been poured the broth of fish cooked in 
water and light wine, the same fish cooked 
in oil as a second course, bread and hard- 
tack, and an occasional dish of beans, 
which seemed to be regarded by them as 
a luxury. They had an abundance of beer 
and light wine and in the morning before 
going to haul their trawls, coffee was 
served with brandy. Cooking was done 
on a brick platform, or fireplace, in the 
cabin, and the captain, the mate and all 
hands sat around one large dish placed on 
the cabin floor and each helped himself 



THE PILOT 41 

with his own spoon. A loaf of bread 
was passed around, each cutting off a 
slice with his own sheath knife. But not- 
withstanding simple food, frugal meals 
and primitive conditions, the hospitality 
was genuine and against the background 
of our recent hunger, thirst and general 
wretchedness, the place was heaven and 
our hosts were angels in thin disguise. 

In about ten days we were brought into 
St. Pierre, the French fishing town on the 
small rocky island of Miquelon, off the 
Newfoundland coast, the depot of the 
French fishing fleet and the only remain- 
ing foothold for the French of the vast 
empire once held by them between the 
North Atlantic and the Mississippi Val- 
ley. The American consul took us in 
charge, sending us to a sailors' boarding 
house and giving each of us a change of 
clothing. In another week we were sent 
on by steamer to Halifax, consigned to 
the American consul at that port. There 
John's feet proved to be in such bad con- 
dition that it was necessary to send him 
to the hospital, and, as gangrene had set 



42 THE PILOT 

in, a portion of each foot was amputated. 
He was "queer" for several weeks, but, 
with returning physical health, gradually 
recovered his mental equilibrium. After 
a few days in Halifax, I was sent on by 
steamer to Boston, bringing the first news 
of either our loss or our rescue. 

On reaching my home town I did not 
go to a boarding house ; there was plenty 
of room for me in the home and I was 
contented to stay there for a while. The 
old salts received me as a long-lost bro- 
ther, and while the official notice was 
never handed me, I was made to feel that 
somewhere in their inner consciousness I 
had been elected a regular member of 
the Amalgamated Society of Sea Dogs, 
and was entitled to an inside seat, if I 
could find one, about the stove of any 
shoemaker's shop in the Cove. The 
Banks were revisited in memory, and all 
the old fog experiences were brought out, 
amplified and elongated as far as possible, 
but it was conceded that we had estab- 
lished a new record in the nautical tradi- 
tions of the Cove. It took several years 



THE PILOT 43 

for me to inch my way back to physical 
solvency from the effects of my exposure, 
and this delayed the carrying out of my 
plans, to which my fishing trips had been 
a prelude. 

The strange thing that I now have to 
record is that I soon forgot, or willfully 
ignored, my whole experience of God, 
prayer and deliverance, and became 
apparently more skeptical and indifferent 
than before. The only way I can ex- 
plain this is that I had not become a 
Christian, and my dominant mental atti- 
tude reasserted itself when danger was 
past. I practically never attended church. 
My position and influence, however, were 
not merely negative; I was positively 
antagonistic to Christianity, and this atti- 
tude continued up to the April following. 



OUT OF THE FOG 

But while I forgot, I was not forgotten. 
God had begun a work in me, the continu- 
ation and completion of which waited on 
my willingness to cooperate, and the most 
powerful force in the world, that of 
believing and persistent prayer, -was being 
released in my behalf. My mother was 
a woman of remarkable Christian charac- 
ter, with rare qualities of mind and heart, 
knowledge and love of the Scriptures, and 
a deep and genuine prayer life. Not- 
withstanding my lack of sympathy with 
her in the things most fundamental, she 
had confidence that the tide would turn 
with me. Her confidence, however, was 
not based on me. She knew the Lord 
and understood that it was not the sheep 
that went out after the Shepherd who was 
lost until it found Him. So she kept a 
well-worn path to the place of prayer. 

She was wise and said little to me on 
the subject, but I knew her life and what 
it was for which she was most deeply 



46 OUT OF THE FOG 

solicitous. She had taught me from the 
Bible as a boy, and many a cold winter 
night, though weary with a day filled 
with household cares, she had come to my 
room and "tucked me in" with prayer. 

My attitude toward Christianity in the 
winter following my second fishing trip 
on the Newfoundland Banks was different 
from that of the year before. Then I 
had been a skeptic, as I assumed, and 
declined responsibility for what to me was 
unknown and seemed to be unknowable. 
But, in the meantime, something had 
happened that had lifted this whole ques- 
tion with me from the realm of specula- 
tion to that of experience. The Pilot's 
response to my signal might, for the time, 
be ignored, but it could not be forgotten. 

But, by deliberately putting aside my 
convictions of God, prayer and deliver- 
ance, treating them as if they had no 
existence in fact, I had introduced an 
element of distrust of my own mental 
processes. The will had taken the place 
of judgment, and the result was confu- 
sion; I was in the fog. I never attended 



OUT OF THE FOG 47 

prayer meeting, but one Sunday night I 
was passing the chapel where such a 
meeting was being held. I had been 
there with my mother, as. a boy, and while 
the meetings were "slow," they were per- 
vaded with a true devotional spirit and a 
something real, though to me intangible 
and difficult to describe. 

Whether I was influenced by the 
memory of these boyhood glimpses into 
the spiritual world, or by the spirit of 
the scoffer and the cynic possessing me 
at that time, or by the still small voice 
that had pointed the way to safety only a 
few months before, I never fully knew, 
but I went in. 

The room was filled with people and 
a meeting was in progress, during which 
two men, old neighbors, whose lives I 
knew well, told the story of their recent 
conversion. One was Skipper Andrew 
Woodbury, a man of blameless life, but 
who had lived sixty-five years without 
religion. The other was my uncle by 
marriage, twenty years my senior, a close 
personal friend and familiarly called 



48 OUT OF THE FOG 

"Dave." I had been in the habit of 
spending many of my Sundays with him, 
as he was a non-church goer, companion- 
able, genuine and open-hearted as the day. 
It was evident that he had found some- 
thing that he wanted to share with his 
friends, and while I made light of it at 
the time, his testimony made a profound 
impression on me. 

Toward the close of the meeting the 
leader gave the invitation to those "who 
want to become Christians" to rise. No 
one stood up. Then he came within 
closer range and invited those "who 
would like to become Christians," but 
still no one responded. I was becoming 
interested and was almost disappointed 
when no one answered to this second invi- 
tation. Then he put up the proposition 
to those "who have no objections to 
becoming Christians." "He will get a 
lot of them on this call," I said to myself, 
but to my surprise, no one stirred. 
"Well," I thought, "this is too bad, but 
why couldn't I help him out? I have no 
objections to becoming a Christian," and 



OUT OF THE FOG 49 

I stood up. I slipped out of the meeting 
ahead of the crowd, but in my room that 
night before I went to bed, I found my- 
self on my knees, trying to pray. I did 
not succeed very well. "Oh, what's the 
use?" I said, "there's nothing in it." 
But I lay awake far into the night, think- 
ing, feeling the beating oif my heart, 
wondering what kept it going and "what 
if it should stop suddenly?" 

But in less than a day these impres- 
sions had passed. I laughed them off and 
kept on in my own way. For six weeks 
I steered clear of Dave, but I did not 
want to lose his friendship, and then, too, 
I was rather curious to find out what, if 
anything, he had really discovered. So, 
one Sunday morning in early April, I 
drifted down to his home, as I had done 
so many times before. I stopped at my 
father's house on the way, and after a 
short visit, went on to Dave's. It was a 
pleasant morning, and I left my overcoat 
at home, as I had but a short distance to 
go. 

Dave lived in a beautiful old farmhouse 



50 OUT OF THE FOG 

near the shore, overlooking the harbor, 
and our Sunday program had been walk- 
ing along the beach, or sitting around 
the house smoking, eating apples, drink- 
ing cider and killing time in the most un- 
conventional way possible. "It's too 
bad," I thought, "that Dave has got reli- 
gion, it spoils all our good times" ; but I 
was hoping to find him less strenuous on 
the subject than when I had heard him in 
the chapel six weeks before. But Dave's 
conversion was so genuine and his enthu- 
siasm so real that it was impossible for 
me entirely to resist and beat back the 
impact of his testimony. 

I concealed my impressions, however, 
and told him that no doubt he needed it, 
it was probably a good thing for him, I 
wouldn't say a word to discourage him, 
but as for me, I did not need that kind 
of medicine. He urged me to go to 
church with him, but I declined his invi- 
tation so positively that he did not renew 
it. "I'll walk along with you as far as 
the corner," I said, but when we came to 
the point of parting an impulse came to 



OUT OF THE FOG 51 

me to go with him. "Walk slow, Dave," 
I said, "I'll go in and get my coat and go 
to church with you." We were both sur- 
prised, he, because he had given up all 
hope of my going with him, and I, be- 
cause ten seconds before I had no thought 
of going. I have often thought of it 
since, and never without a sense of pro- 
found thankfulness for the impulse that 
came to me that bright Sunday morning, 
at the parting of the ways. 

I went with Dave to church that morn- 
ing, came back and spent the afternoon 
with him and went with him again to the 
evening service, after which I remained 
for personal conversation. Dave had ex- 
hausted his ammunition, but the man 
who talked with me had been practicing 
the Christian life for twenty-five years 
and was a man of fine personality, culture 
and business experience. He knew the 
Gospel and also knew human nature, and 
mine in particular, while I knew that he 
was genuine. 

"Charlie," he said, "don't you think it 
is time for you to be a Christian?" 



52 OUT OF THE FOG 

"No," I answered, "I can't be a hypo- 
crite; I can't pretend to believe what I 
don't beheve." 

"What is there that you can't believe?" 

"Well, there is the Bible, for instance." 

"Don't you believe the Bible?" 

"About as I believe Robinson Crusoe." 

"Do you think the trouble is with the 

Bible, or with yourself? Don't you think 

that, if you had faith, as a Christian man, 

the Bible would be a different book to 

you?" 

"That looks easy; of course, if I had 
faith I would be just as you are. But 
how can a man believe what he does not 
believe?" 

"Did you ever hear about prayer?" 
"Yes, I have heard something about 
it." 

"Don't you think that there is some- 
thing in it?" 

"Yes, I am inclined to think there is." 
(I could not honestly deny it in the light 
of my experience.) 

"Well, don't you think that if you were 



OUT OF THE FOG 53 

to pray to God for faith, God would give 
it to you?" 

This question touched the spring of 
memory, and conscience showed me what 
it thought of me. I was ashamed of my 
Httleness and of my unscientific attitude 
of mind in willfully ignoring the greatest 
facts of my experience, and I was also 
ashamed of my ingratitude. And so, in 
an unguarded moment, that is, in a 
moment when my will was off its guard 
and my judgment asserted its right to 
be heard, I gave my answer to the ques- 
tion and the answer was, "Yes, I believe 
that He would." 

And then came the question, "Won't 
you do it?" This question precipitated 
the fight of m_y life. I do not remember 
how long my friend waited for my 
answer, but judging from the struggle 
in my mind, it must have been a long 
time. What would it mean for me to 
answer this question in the affirmative? 
First, it would mean the sacrifice of my 
independence; next, it would mean fel- 
lowship with a lot of so-called Chris- 



54 OUT OF THE FOG 

tians, whose Christianity was not of a 
manly type; third, it would mean a step 
in the dark, and this seemed to me to be 
unreasonable. On the other hand, it 
might mean the winning of something 
better than that which I called inde- 
pendence; it might also mean fellowship 
with the really great characters of the 
Christian Church, and these men had 
always appeared very attractive to me. 
With this last thought came the question, 
How did these men live the victorious 
life? and it was clear to me that they 
lived it by faith. Then came the thought. 
How did they begin to have faith? and 
it seemed to me that this step in the dark, 
which I hesitated to take, was probably 
the very step by which these great men 
had passed from a life of unbelief to their 
victory of faith. 

This last thought came as a revelation. 
It had always seemed to me that faith 
was an experience of the emotions or a 
satisfying of the intellect, and that one 
might obtain faith by the initiative of the 
will was a new idea to me. If this was 



OUT OF THE FOG 55 

true, the step in the dark was not unrea- 
sonable but scientific and psychological. 
I was certainly in the dark then. It 
could be no darker if I went forward in 
the path to which my friend invited me. 
I decided therefore to take the step and 
to pray for faith, hoping that in the pro- 
cess I should find a Christian experience. 
And so I answered, "Yes, I'll do it." 

My friend prayed with me and then I 
prayed, but all that I could say was 
"Lord, show me the way." I was not 
conscious of any special interest, I had 
simply willed to pray and wanted to 
believe. I had won the fight with my- 
self, however, to the extent of getting 
the consent of my will to pray and to 
trust, but I realized that the battle with 
myself was only begun and I knew also 
that I had another fight ahead of me, or 
a series of them, with the conditions that 
hemmed me in and seemed to make the 
Christian life impracticable. 

One of these adverse conditions was 
my relations with the men in my board- 
ing house. How could I go back and 



56 OUT OF THE FOG 

tell them that I had decided to do the 
thing that I had ridiculed and scoffed at 
in their presence? Of course this was 
pure cowardice; I was afraid of their 
ridicule. But the break was made easier 
for me than I feared it would be. I found 
on entering the smoking room of the 
boarding house, that "Uncle Dick Moss," 
a rank spiritualist, had the floor. He w^as 
on his high horse and was charging up 
and down the room in the midst of a 
bitter and blatant Ingersollian tirade 
against Christianity and the Bible. The 
crowd was cheering him on. The day 
before, this probably would have amused 
me and I might have followed him, sup- 
porting his arguments, or rather asser- 
tions — there were no arguments. 

But during the twelve hours that had 
just passed I had been facing realities 
and Uncle Dick's exhibition disgusted 
me. So when he had quieted down, I 
decided that it was time for me to run up 
my colors. If the break had to come, it 
had better come then. "Uncle Dick," 
I said, "you have been talking about 



OUT OF THE FOG 57 

something that you don't know anything 
about. Here you are swallowing spirit- 
ualism, hook, bob and sinker, and having 
trouble with the Bible and the only reli- 
gion that can do the business that we 
need to have done. The trouble with you 
is that you are afraid that the Bible will 
upset your spiritualism, and you don't 
dare to investigate the Bible and stand 
by the result of your investigation. I'm 
tired of this whole business, and I have 
made up my mind to investigate the 
Bible and, if it is what I think it is, to try 
to live by it. I am going to be a Chris- 
tian." 

A shout and a laugh went up. I was 
called "Deacon," and it was suggested 
that I lead in prayer or at least make a 
few remarks. But I had said enough to 
put myself on record and it was hardly 
to be expected that they would take me 
seriously on such short notice. When it 
came time to go to bed I felt that in order 
not to be misunderstood I must pray in 
the presence of my roommate. He was 
a cynic and a nothingarian and I felt sure 



58 OUT OF THE FOG 

that he would neither understand nor ap- 
preciate it. It was hard to bring it about, 
as he kept on talking in a way that 
seemed to give me no opportunity to 
turn the subject naturally. I was 
tempted to let it pass, but felt that, if I 
did, it would be fatal to my new-formed 
purpose. So finally, in almost an agony 
of awkwardness, I blurted out, "Jim, I 
don't care what you think about it, I'm 
going to pray." Jim proved to be en- 
tirely mild and agreeable about it, how- 
ever, and gave me his blessing in a pat- 
ronizing sort of a way. The next day I 
burned my bridges behind me by packing 
my trunk and going home. 

Up to this time I was conscious of 
nothing unusual. What things had 
taken place I had done myself and it had 
been entirely within my own option and 
power to do or not to do them. I had 
received the testimony of at least four 
witnesses of the fact of conversion and 
the reality of the Christian life ; I had re- 
laxed the opposition of my will and given 
my judgment a chance to act ; I had taken 



OUT OF THE FOG 59 

advice from experience; I had prayed; I 
had turned my face toward the Christian 
life; I had cut loose from conditions un- 
friendly to Christian experience, and I 
was trying to be a Christian. But I was 
still in the fog. 

For the next three days I worked very 
hard trying to be a Christian. I attended 
a meeting each night, rose for prayer, 
prayed, did everything I was told to do, 
and as much more as I could think of. 
The burden of my prayer and of my re- 
quests for prayer was that I might have 
faith. I wanted to get something that I 
thought every Christian had, or must 
have in order to be a Christian, and so 
far as I knew, I was willing to pay the 
price. But nothing resulted, except the 
natural weariness from my own exertions. 
I was still in the fog. 

The fifth day was "Fast Day," a good 
old New England institution, with a 
prayer meeting in the morning, which I 
attended and at which I rose for prayer. 
In the afternoon was a union service, 
with a civic or semi-religious topic, but 



60 OUT OF THE FOG 

I attended it, as I did not want anything 
to get by me that might contribute to the 
solution of my problem. There was 
scarcely anything about the service that 
was calculated to make a spiritual im- 
pression. The address was poor, as also 
was the music. I tried to follow the 
argument, but finally gave it up and 
began to think about that which had been 
uppermost in my mind for the five days 
past. The thing baffled me; the object 
of my quest had eluded my every effort 
to grasp it. The experience of the five 
days was new, but it contained nothing 
but that which could be accounted for by 
purely natural causes. I reviewed the 
whole period to see if I had left out any 
essential part of the formula. Was it 
possible that my skepticism had been 
well founded, that there was nothing in 
the so-called "Christian experience" after 
all? It was about four o'clock in the 
afternoon of the fifth day since I had set 
my face toward the Christian life and I 
was still in the fog. 

But I was weary with the effort, and as 



OUT OF THE FOG 61 

I thought it over, I said to myself, "What 
are you trying to do?" and the answer 
was, "I am trying to be a Christian." 
Then it dawned upon me that trying was 
not trusting; that, if I succeeded in my ef- 
fort, I should have only a self-made prod- 
uct and not the religion of the Bible, and 
that it was unreasonable for me to expect 
the results of faith before exercising faith 
itself. I was stumbling at the very sim- 
plicity of faith. I was working to win 
what God was waiting to give, while my 
latent faculty of faith, the greatest asset 
in personality, was lying worthless 
through disuse. I thought of my expe- 
rience on the ocean, when finally, helpless 
to help myself, I had left my whole prob- 
lem with the Pilot and He had taken 
command and brought us through to 
safety, and so I deliberately gave up the 
struggle and said to myself, "It is right 
for me to serve God and to live for Him, 
and I will do it whether I have what they 
call an ^experience' or not." And, having 
settled the question, I dismissed it and 
waited for instructions. 



OUT OF THE FOG 63 

And then something happened, for, 
from without, surprising me with its pres- 
ence, like the discovery of a welcome 
but unexpected guest, there came into 
my life a deep, great, overflowing peace. 
I had never known it before, and there- 
fore I could not by any possibility have 
imagined it; but I recognized it as some- 
thing from God. It was not sensational, 
it came quietly; as quietly "as the day- 
light comes when the night is done." It 
was not emotional, unless it was in itself 
an emotion. But emotions are transient 
and this had come to stay. 

With the peace, there came also some- 
thing that seemed to be a reinforcement 
of my life principle, an achieving power, a 
disposition to dare and an ability to do 
that which hitherto had seemed impos- 
sible ; and the petty pessimism of the past 
gave way before this new consciousness. 

With this deep incoming tide of peace 
and power came a clearing of the mental 
atmosphere, and I saw that the fog had 
lifted. When I saw this, I said to my- 
self quietly, "I think I am a Christian," 



64 OUT OF THE FOG 

and almost immediately added, "I am a 
Christian!" 

The fog had passed, and the drifting 
was over; I had come within sight of 
land. What land it was I did not then 
know, but it proved to be a new world. 
How great it is I do not yet fully under- 
stand, but I have been exploring it thirty 
years and I think it is a continent. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



^UG 



\^sX 



